Bulwark Takes - This Trump Rally’s Creep Factor Is Off the Charts

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Tim Miller and Andrew Egger give their takes on Donald Trump’s rally at the Mount Airy Casino Resort, where the supposed “affordability” message was instead swallowed by recycled riffs, Somali rants, and compliments about his staffers’ lips. Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES. Promo Code BULWARKTAKES

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the Bullwark here with my buddy, Andrew Egger, writer of the Morning Shots newsletter. If you need a morning newsletter, it's much better than the Politico newsletter. They just gave Donald Trump an award today. I'd recommend signing up for the morning shots at the Bullock.com. Egger, Donald Trump was at the Mount Airy Casino Resort. If he's going to leave the White House and he's not going to go to one of his golf courses, you better bet he's going to be at a casino resort in the Poconos. and he was there to talk about the economy, ostensibly.

Susie Wiles, who he was the new nickname for. We'll get to in a second. The chief of staff was out there saying, you know, Donald's got to get out there again. He's got a campaign. We're going to get the rallies back going. He's going to get the campaign Donald. We're going to get the juice back. You watched it.

We've got a couple clips, but what were your top takeaway? What's your top takeaway? away from watching. Yeah. So I was interested to know what this was going to be like going in because Trump has not been doing these. I mean, like, I had almost not noticed that he had stopped. But really for kind of the first time since he arrived on the scene, Trump has not been doing rallies this year. He did them all through his 2016 campaign. He did them all through all three of his campaigns and all through his first presidential term, right? Yeah. But, but, and there's been some question like, oh, is Trump kind of like losing the ear of his people? Is he not like, you know, having that ear to the ground like

he's had in the past. And there's also been questions like, you know, what will it be like now? He's kind of going out there in sort of defensive mode with the milk starting to curdle and the mood starting to sour. And what was it going to be like? And the answer is exactly like every single other fucking one of these he's ever done, right? Down to all the same laugh lines and all the same kind of boo lines. And it really was just kind of like a, my jaw was on the floor within like five or ten minutes. It's just like, I guess for some of these people, it's maybe their first one or whatever, or maybe he's just playing the hits by now. But like, aren't you a little bored after a decade of like, ah, look at the fake news back there in the fake news pen, everybody

pointing boo? Like, is nobody a little bit sick of that by now? Where's the beef? I guess they're having a good time. Can't get no respect. Donald can't get no respect. You know, it's the same material. That's true. I guess I would say this, a top observation I would have, and I just want a cop to this. You said you're going to watch it. I was like, fine. I'll watch it with you. I turned it on. I did a couple minutes and I was like, I can't. And then I muted it for a while. Then I turned it back out. So I didn't watch the whole thing. We should note it's ongoing as we speak. Yeah, it's still ongoing. We quit. We felt like we had it. Maybe he'll break some crazy news and we'll have missed it. We'll have to do it in the post.

Let me tell you, black people love Trump. I got the biggest vote. I got the biggest vote with black people. know a scam better than anybody they know what it is to be scam thank you man thank you i appreciate it we did great thank you i i like this guy uh my view though was there are kind of like two narratives that are out there about him and you can only judge so much based on one speech right like one is potentially that he's as you mentioned like losing touch with like his people and the others he's like tired and old and can't do this anymore and i don't you know on the latter he seemed to have the same vigor. I didn't watch his walk that closely. He wasn't really doing the weird walk. He didn't look like. He looked like an old guy, but kind of normal old. I don't know that he

gave us a lot of evidence, though, that his fingers on the pulse of people's concerns about the economy, though. I don't know that he's assuaged many concerns about this, is he spent much of the speech complaining about the people who say that there are problems out there. Yeah. So this is sort of like the subtext of this speech. The reason he's getting back out there now is because the people around him have been like kind of quietly and with growing alarm trying to say Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump,

like this economic message is getting away from you. People are really, really starting to look poorly on this whole project. They don't like the tariffs. I mean, nobody's saying this to him in quite this blunt of terms. But this is kind of the subtext. It's like you have some economic stuff to address.

And for weeks, Trump's response to that has been, no, that's a bunch of lies from the media and fake polls and actually. actually we're in this golden age and we're richer than ever and everybody's having a lovely time. And so he's started saying this thing in recent weeks that that, you know, he's, he's been complaining about the Democrats affordability hoax, right? That, that, that, you know, Democrats are talking about affordability now, but it's this, it's this, you know, it's this, it's this sneaky move that they shouldn't be allowed to do because there's a lot of inflation under Joe Biden.

Interestingly, this was one thing he got into in the speech. He kind of, we've got the affordability hoax clip. Should we just watch it together? Let's do that. Look at that. Our prices are coming down. Their prices, it's a hoax. They're just, remember they said the Inflation Reduction Act, remember that? Billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, the inflation, and after they got it

approved, because we had a few Republicans that went along with that whole hoax. And remember, we're going to pass the inflation. And I said, there's nothing to do with inflation reduction there. There's nothing to do with that. It has nothing. It didn't even, it had nothing to do with inflation either way, other than raising inflation, perhaps, because it was such a stupid. And then they admitted they fought it like, oh, no, this is inflation. After they got the thing passed, then they said, we agree. It has nothing to do with inflation. Screw you. We don't care. That's what it is. We're dealing with bad people. And the word affordability is the exact same thing. can't say affordability hoax because I agree the prices were too high. So I can't go to hoax because they'll misconstrue that. But they use the word affordability. And that's their only word. They say, affordability. And everyone says, oh, that must mean Trump has high prices. No, our prices are coming down tremendously from the highest prices in the history of our country.

Okay, that's enough. This is enough of Trump. Um, uh, Andrew, have you, uh, have you got the message there? Was that clear his view on the hoax and the inflation, right? And you, you, you were talking about like, the difficulty of sort of assessing the vigor, right? And the, and how with it he is. And this is like the problem with Trump is like he's so weirdly, uniquely himself in the way that he talks about all this stuff. Like any other person going up there talking in this way, you would be like basket case, immediate basket case. But he's kind of been doing it. for years, right? I mean, he's obviously gotten worse. He's started leaning on this concept of the weave because this is just how his brain is. He just follows it down every, every cul-de-sac and every little cranny of thoughts that he has. There was one other moment in here when he started to say, oh, we're going to break some news for the fake news media. And he started to say, you know, Joe Biden put four people on the Federal Reserve. But then he got distracted. He started talking about Yelan Omar. It was like 15 minutes before he came back around, literally 15 minutes

before he came back around to say, oh yeah, what I was going to say before is we think maybe they might have been authorized with an auto pen signature, which would mean we could just get rid of all of them. But he didn't even, he hadn't even looked that up. You know,

he was just like, this is a thought I had. Maybe we should check and see if those were auto pin guys. We'll get to the bottom of it. So, I mean, this is maybe, maybe he's worse. He's older. He's getting older every day, right?

But it's like, it all comes through this weird, like, force field of, of like the weird unique Trump thing that I honestly, kind of helps him because people just, like, read it as him instead of as, like, old maniac. The lack of clarity, I mean, like, his lack of ability to talk about a message. And at one point, he was talking about how these people are telling me that I have to talk about affordability, meaning his advisors.

And, you know, he's very clear talking about who's to blame. And, like, the one thing he's got down is Joe Biden. Bullwark takes a sponsor by ORAFRAFRAFRA. I've got a bit of a holiday gift-giving pattern. I tell myself, this year, it's going to be different. and then I will panic at the last minute because I forgot to get the more thoughtful gift and I'll just buy a gift card. Well, this year I skipped the panic and I gave an aura frame.

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I turned it off on the first time within one minute. He'd already mentioned Sleepy Joe. I turned it off. And then I turned it back on. And within a couple minutes, he's polling the crowd as to whether Sleepy Joe or Crooked Joe is better. And that clip we displayed an extended kind of incoherent riff about the Inflation Reduction Act, which nobody remembers even what that is except him. And about whether that's inflation is up or down, he does talk a little bit about other people praising him. he mentioned the emir of Qatar praising him which is shocker when you bought a plane from him

and the king of Saudi Arabia I assume he's talking about Crown Prince MBS there and it's like not a lot of clarity when it came to you know the ostensible goal of talking to people about their economic concerns and how he's working to make them better a lot a lot of focus on the praise he's received from foreign dictators and from the and the blame shifting to Biden. Yeah. And it's not like the message, the economic message that they are trying to get him to roll out there is particularly complicated, right? I mean, the, the message they have decided to stick with right now is Joe Biden broke everything affordability wise, and we are fixing it. And we're in the process of fixing it. And it's only going to get better and better

and better, which is fine as a message, I guess. It's pretty simple. And even Trump, you know, struggles to to fuck it up up there but it's also totally incorrect you know i mean like all of the kind of like the reason the reason this is becoming such an affordability problem for him is because people perceive that it is not getting better it's not getting better at all it's getting worse and worse and worse the impacts of the tariffs are like you know slowly every business in america is is losing ground against them and and finally the ones that have uh withstanding or withstood uh the the the urge to raise their prices all along are like buckling down and like they're they're raising them and people are

feeling them. And it's just going to keep happening. So I don't know. I mean, I guess like in in one sense, he did not really accomplish the thing he came out to do, which is to make that specific pitch. But in another sense, the pitch is not good either. You know, the pitch is not is not sufficient to the moment. So it's like even if he had come out and been really laser focused, I don't really know. Like what he would have to do is give up on the tariffs. What he would have to do is like be like my bad and change direction. And that's not going to happen. So he's a little bit stuck. Yeah, he talked about how Terriff was his favorite word. We get in a little bit, he shouts out his staff quite a bit, a lot of time discussing the Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, how great he's job doing.

He's just doing a heck of a job. He makes Scott Bessent stand up, you know, not to be gay-bashed, which is, I guess, been a plus of what it could have been, but to talk about how handsome he is, how he's out of central casting. And how mean he is. I think Trump was surprised to learn that Bessent has this kind of like. killer instinct when it comes to financial dealings. I think that is actually the thing that he really likes and expects him. Well, you know, gays, we can do a read, okay?

Famously, something gays are good at. And then he starts complimenting the women around him on his team. And I do want to play a little bit of that clip where he's mentioning Susie Wiles and Carolyn Lipp. And I have no higher priority than making America affordable again. That's what we're going to do. And again, they cause the high prices, and we're bringing them down.

It's a simple message. If I had one message tonight, you know, this is being covered like all over the world. This is crazy. Because I haven't made a speech in a little while. You know, when you win, when you win, you say, oh, I can now rest. So, Susie Trump, do you know Susie Trump? Sometimes referred to as Susie Wilde, Susie Trump. Not a bad saying, there. She's the great chief of staff. They don't use the word chief of staff anymore because of the Indians. got extremely upset. But now the Indians actually want their name used, which is true. They never didn't want it used. But the chief of staff, and she's fantastic, she said, we have to start

campaigning, sir. I said, I won. What do I have to do? Already? They said, we have to win the midterms, and you're the guy that's going to take us over the midterm. I promise. I promise the payoff is worth us. Staying through this applause. Suzy, come on, Susie. Maybe not. You'll probably get grossed out. Look at Susie.

She's the greatest. And who do we see there? We even brought our superstar today, Caroline. Stand up, Caroline. I would have to rank Caroline as pop. Probably the best of the bunch on their White House press secretary. Isn't she great? Is Caroline great?

Yes. You know, when she goes on television, Fox, like I mean, They dominate. They dominate when she gets up there with that beautiful face and those lips that don't stop. Pop, pop, like a little machine gun. She's got no fear. Yeah. So we got the chief of staff's name wrong and complimented the press secretary's lips.

So, you know, I guess that's Trump. I guess that's where we're at. I don't know if you have any deep thoughts on that, Andrew. But I did feel like I had to watch it. So the viewers had to watch it. I sure don't. yeah that was that was a peak moment of of like man we're just really we talked about the age thing there is there is definitely a like gross old man energy that comes through right there in particular

yeah um we had a couple more clips i don't know if i can stomach any more trump tonight people get the idea it was the same old shit you know it really was like yeah the the three thing the two things i'd pulled out here which uh are worth mentioning he does do the four more years thing And he says, I'm not allowed to run, but then they do the four more years chant. You know, that got as much of an applause as anything that you saw tonight. I sort of tells you where the crowd's at. And then he does an extended rant about Elon Omar. And one thing that he says in that rant is all she does is bitch.

And I guess one other observation I had is he's really letting loose on the cussing. A lot of cussing, you know, and I cussing. So it's not really, it's just an observation. like all she does is bitch is like a real i don't know there's an edge to that um this little massaginic edge to that uh for me um and uh you know a lot of very lengthy as you mentioned rant about uh about Elon so those are my those are the other observations i don't know if you had anything else i've been letting the cussing fly a little in this video too uh maybe it's just something in the air this evening but on the on the Elon Omar and the sort of the Somali rant

he's been doing a lot of us the last few weeks. It was very interesting to see like this was another moment when the crowd just sort of came alive, right? And they're cheering and they're jeering and they're chanting, send her back. You know, she's an American citizen, but they're chanting, send her back, presumably to Somalia. And it's really, it was striking to me because, again, this is supposed to be an affordability thing, right? And like the affordability message, people are like, you know, kind of idly clapping along with his talking points. whatever, they're happy that he says like the price of Thanksgiving turkeys was down or whatever

gas is down. But like the stuff they, the stuff these guys really still come alive for is not the affordability stuff. And Trump knows this. I mean, I think this is like part of why Trump has sort of like resisted this, this push from his advisors to talk about, you know, affordability because he sees this sort of this issue he has to go on the defensive about. And he knows what gets, what gets his people going. And it's, it's the bigotry. You know, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the hate. It's the like, let's all get our blood pumping while we talk about the people whose lives we're going to destroy, you know, right around the corner. Like any minute now, we'll be sending her back. And isn't that so fun and so awesome?

And so, yeah, I think that's like, like, even when he's trying to come and, like, do this other thing where he's talking to the median voter, he's here in front of his people and they're all having a good time with the stuff that gets them going. To me, the Somalis are filling the role of, you need an enemy if you're Trump. One of the things that I think, and there have been a lot of things that have got him out of his groove this year, mostly the self-inflicted wounds of his own policy and focusing instead of on like building a ballroom instead of like doing populist right stuff. But kind of an atmospheric point that is too kind of what you talked about there is like he needs a foe, you know, and he needs somebody to get people around out to be mad ass, right? Like a key trump, his whole career was the people in charge. you know they're stupid they're screwing you over and you can't do that when like you control everything right and he like he tried it out a little bit on jerome powell it's like it's that guy jerome powell over there you should really be mad at and that didn't really that doesn't have

the same oomph you know and um i do feel like the somalis are are are the ones that are kind of filling that void um and uh and you know it's a lot of easier to vilify a group than to like make the case that your policies are making people's lives better. And, uh, and I think that, um, anyway, that'd be my observation on the Elon Omar bed. Okay. That's Andrew Eager. I'm Tim Miller. Hopefully he doesn't do too many of these. Uh, Donald Trump is tired and he doesn't want to do them anymore. Susie Trump slash Susie Wiles really wants them out there. Um, maybe she just, uh, maybe she misses flying around. I don't, who knows what's inside her head. But Susie wants them out there. I'm hoping she doesn't win because that wasn't

fun for me. Agar, appreciate you staying up with us. Everybody else, subscribe to the feed. I thought you were going to talk. Everybody else, subscribe to the feed. Comment. Tell us we're great. We'll see you later.